Progeny
by Cyberwolf
Summary: Neji and Tenten adjust to the pitterpatter of little feet. Pure, unadulterated, fluffy WAFFness. [chapter 2 up]
1. Target Practice

_"By profession, I am a soldier and proud of that fact. But I amprouder - infinitely prouder - to be a father."_

-General Douglas MacArthur

* * *

Hyuuga Lien, beloved son of Hyuuga Neji and Tenten, heir apparent to the Hyuuga clan leadership, looked _exactly_ like his father. From his dark hair – left long because his mother wept at the thought of setting blade to those 'darling locks' – to his white Byakugan eyes, to the shape of the bones underneath his skin: in every way Lien looked like his father reincarnated into childhood. 

He acted, of course, anything but. The peace of the Hyuuga household was nightly shattered by baby Lien's wailings, and Neji began to sport eye bags that rivaled Sabaku no Gaara's. (His vengeance on Naruto's continual pointing out of this fact occurred when his cousin-in-law's own son, louder even than his, arrived in the autumn). When he was old enough to crawl around on his own – a feat, a proud father was quick to point out at every available opportunity, that Lien achieved much earlier than the average baby – he drove his parents to distraction by disappearing given the slightest chance, invariably found in some strange location, usually in a position that heralded either danger or impending mess. Neji still had nightmares about the time they found Lien on the Nara clan's lands, somehow cradled in the ten-point antlers of a very bemused stag.

Lien was not quiet. He was not shy. He was eternally curious, and no matter how many times you told him he did not understand that throwing his toys into visitors' faces was rude. He was audacious and ambitious: at the age of four he had proclaimed to his 'g'anpa Hashi' – Lien insisted on calling the Hyuuga clan head by that title, despite Hiashi technically being his great-uncle; Tenten pointed out that, genetically speaking, Hiashi-sama _was_ Lien's grandfather – that he, Hyuuga Lien, would defeat him one day soon.

"But fiwst teach me the Ka'ten," he lisped to his enchanted grandfather, who had promised to do so as soon as he was old enough. (Immediately thereafter Uzumaki Shunrei leaped onto his grandfather's lap, next to his cousin, and demanded his own share of cuddling and training).

In other words, he was, in personality, every bit his mother's son.

The Hyuugas, used to less attention-grabbing youngsters, were confused and slightly intrigued by Lien's arrival in their lives. With a pair of adoring parents, loving aunts, an indulgent uncle who was also Hokage, a grandfather who doted on his grandchildren the way he had never been able to with his own offspring, _and _a hero-worshipping younger cousin; well, Lien was a little spoiled.

For example, he knew that his cries would bring his parents running.

* * *

Sure enough, less than ten seconds after he had walked despondently into the Hyuuga clan compound, sniffling, his father had ceased his sparring with a hard-pressed Hyuuga jounin to attend to his teary-eyed son. 

Neji scooped the five-year-old up into his arms, bouncing Lien a little in the way he had learnt when soothing a teething toddler. "What's wrong, Lien?" he asked softly, trying to meet his son's eyes.

"I…I…" Lien gulped, then buried his face in his father's shoulder. Neji felt the cloth of his tunic turn slightly damp. Feeling a little panicked as he always did at the sight of Lien's tears, Neji began to unconsciously pace.

When Lien was a baby, fretful and prone to waking at odd hours of the night, Neji had developed the habit of…humming to pacify his infant son. He did not – _could_ not – sing lullabies, the way Tenten did, but found that the sound of his voice pitched low and soothing, even if in a wordless monotone, could often calm the baby down. (Later he discovered that it had much the same effect on the baby's mother – unless he pitched it even _lower_, and not at all soothingly, which had a different and very interesting effect.)

He began his tuneless humming again, and breathed a little easier as he felt Lien relax slightly against his shoulder. He let the little boy cuddle into his shoulder for a few more moments before stopping his humming and asking, "Can you tell me what the matter is, Lien?"

Lien hiccupped a little before speaking. "We...we were practicing shurikens at the target-range near the Academy…" he began.

Neji, despite the boy's still-despondent tone, fought a grin. Lien wasn't yet old enough to attend the Academy, but he hung around the vicinity (along with Shunrei) with the excuse that they were waiting for their older cousin, Aburame Hino, to come out and play. Their 'waiting-around' time was incredibly fruitful, to the point that both he and Naruto were sure that their sons were the equals of any Academy first-years there, and thus fully eligible for early acceptance.

And of _course_ Tenten's son would spend a good amount of time at target-ranges.

But…Neji's eyes narrowed a little as he pursued the thought. Lien and Shunrei spent a great deal of time in the company of older children – children who might conceivably be resentful of the younger ones' skills. Neji could remember being the target of such resentment himself, branch-house prodigy that he was. Hino would stop any such displays in his presence, of course, but the older boy couldn't always be there, and neither Lien nor Shunrei were exactly…diplomatic. (Which was no surprise to anyone, really –none of their parents had ever been known for self-effacing behavior) He could just imagine their reactions to an attempted intimidation.

And he didn't really think that their Hokage-taught collection of profanity would endear them to the older children.

Because of his suspicions, his voice was a little dark as he asked Lien to continue. The little Hyuuga boy sniffled, and wiped his nose on his sleeve. Normally Neji would have scolded Lien for this, but he was too busy conjuring up a list of ways to loom threateningly over bullies.

"Then…then Shun hadda go home, 'cos it was ramen night…"

Neji rolled his eyes. Apparently Naruto's love of ramen _was_ written in his blood; it had been transmitted in its entirety to his son, and it had been hard to say who looked prouder and happier when a tiny Shunrei had, at the tender age of two, inhaled approximately thrice his body-weight in noodles – Naruto or Teuchi, the owner of the Ichiraku.

"But I didn't wanna, so I stayed in the fifty-yard lane and p'acticed my shurikens s'more. But I…I…" Lien snapped his head around as the sound of pounding footsteps reached his and Neji's ears.

"Mommy!" he chirped, just as Tenten came hurtling around the corner, skidding a little as she raced towards her husband and son.

"What happened?" she demanded, unsheathing so many weapons that she created a three-yard radius of sharp and pointy death around herself. Neji's heart skipped a beat as Lien hurled himself into his mother's arms, threading himself carelessly yet safely through the blades. Tenten and Lien did not consider the presence of edged weapons as anything dangerous or out-of-the-ordinary; on the contrary, they seemed more comfortable when they knew they were in close proximity.

It was an attitude that Neji sometimes found rather disconcerting.

Tenten set down her weapons so that she could cuddle Lien to herself; Hyuuga everywhere jumped as several kilograms of steel thudded to the floor. She paid little heed to either weaponry or others as she looked over her young son, checking him for injury. She heaved a sigh of relief when no bleeding wounds or broken bones presented themselves to her searching mother's eyes.

"Now, you tell your mommy what's wrong, Lien-chan," she cooed, nuzzling her son's dark hair.

"That's what I was about to ask," Neji mumbled, carefully stepping over the various blades to come closer to his family.

"Mommy, mommy," Lien cried, his tears starting up again. Neji and Tenten tensed. "I…I…_I missed the bulls-eye at fifty yards!" _he wailed.

Neji sweatdropped. "What? Is that it…?" He trailed off as he noticed his wife only grow more agitated.

"What? _My _little eagle miss his target? At fifty yards? THE RANGE-KEEPERS WERE _CHEATING_!" she proclaimed, hugging her son tighter. "Or maybe it was the windage. Did you check your shurikens, Lien-chan? Were they off-balance? Wind jutsus! Were they practicing wind jutsus at the Academy? They could have done it! Those little brats are always jealous of you, aren't they, little eagle?"

"They don't teach wind jutsus at the Academy," Neji pointed out, but neither of his weapons-crazed beloveds seemed to be listening.

"Maybe…" Lien allowed, seeming to calm down. "It _was_ kinda breezy…"

"There you go," Tenten said, and they both immediately cheered up. "It's okay, Lien-chan. You know what? Let's do some training so the wind won't bother you anymore."

"Yay training!" Lien cheered, now inexplicably holding several miniature shuriken in his tiny hands. "Training training training…" he sang, clinging to his mother's neck like a baby koala – neither of them minding the little shuriken he held a little removed from his mother's skin. He continued to sing his happy little tune, now echoed by his mother as she picked up her weapons, storing them away to the beat of the song.

Neji heaved a little sigh. Tenten, who harbored a deep and subtle resentment against wind jutsus only worsened by her match with Temari of the Sand, had liked to train in the middle of storms in order to overcome her weakness. It had caused more than one really horrible cold which had deprived him of a sparring partner, and later, caused him to be uncharacteristically worried – to the point of making and delivering chicken broth to her.

Thankfully, there were no storms in the forecast.

* * *

The next day, two Hyuuga cousins scolded their enthusiastic spouses as Shunrei and Lien threw shurikens into the face of a modified Rasengan – "just as good as gale-force winds!" Tenten had chirped, "Thanks Naruto-kun!" 


	2. Girl Problems

**Notes: This chapter takes place a few years after the first one, since 'Progeny' isn't written in a linear fashion. Later chapters will deal with the pregnancy, babyhood, and so on. This one is semi-focused on Shunrei; I hope I've made the little troublemaker's character more understandable. **

* * *

_Well, I'm a-standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona  
__I'm such a fine sight to see  
__It's a girl, my lord! - in a flatbed Ford  
__Slowing down to take a look at me…_

- the Eagles

* * *

Unlike his cousins Hino and Lien, who were for the most part physical copies of their fathers, Uzumaki Shunrei bore the stamp of _both_ his parents' genetic legacies on his person. The most striking manifestation of this was the way Shunrei's hair, as dark as his mother's at the roots, lightened to his father's golden-blond at the tips; the strange, eye-catching result looked nothing at all like the dye-jobs that several females (and a few noteworthy males) had attempted to perform on themselves, Shunrei's coloration being so unique as to be a trend-starter. (Ino, in particular, had used to stare at Shunrei's head so intently, trying to mentally design a way to duplicate the effect, that she had made the then-three-year-old once burst into tears) 

Similarly, his height, coloration, and features were all more compromises between Naruto and Hanabi's physical characteristics rather than drawn entirely from one or the other. His eyes, though, were purely his father's: large, almost shockingly blue, framed by long dark lashes and even slit-pupiled like Naruto's eyes had become – and lacking any Byakugan properties whatsoever.

This had never been an issue within his family, however. And his slit-pupiled blue eyes, light-reflective, glowing in the night, were just as strange and wondrous as the Byakugan silvers – more, perhaps, for that only two people in the world possessed them.

In short, Shunrei was a very good-looking boy; almost as good-looking – though not _quite _as much as, in her humble opinion –as his cousin Lien, and of course they shared enough characteristics to be similar in appearance anyway.

So _why_ was all the female attention in their Academy class centered on Lien, and none at all on Shunrei? Tenten pondered this as she watched her son flee – there was simply no other word for the way he burst into the relative safety of their home – from a large group of besotted-looking girls. The expression on his face so exactly mirrored Neji's when _he_ had been confronted by the same problem that Tenten was forced to muffle a stream of giggles underneath her palm. (Much to Neji's chagrin, she'd had much the same reaction to _his _suffering – not the reaction he'd wanted from the only girl he'd ever been interested in)

"Good-bye, Lien-kuuuun!"

"See you tomorrow, Lien-kun!"

"I LOVE YOU LIEN-KUN!"

The girls called out these loving good-byes with as much affection as if Lien, running for all he was worth _away _from them, hadn't just slammed the gates in their faces. From Tenten's vantage-point on the Hyuuga rooftops (she liked the open space, and the sunset light it caught, to polish her weapons in) she could see Shunrei strolling along delightedly, hands in his pockets, grinning, whistling - the very picture of unconcern at his cousin's panicked flight. He stepped over the dust-clouding brawl that had erupted when the last girl had yelled her confession of love with nary a change of expression, and simply vaulted over the walls of the compound rather than go through the trouble of opening the gates Lien had so firmly shut behind him. When Shunrei entered the Hyuuga compounds, he made his way over to where Lien was bent over, wheezing for breath after his intense flight. Shunrei pounded Lien's back so hard he almost sent the taller boy sprawling; he then proceeded to offer several smirky observations about his cousin, his cousin's similarity to a mouse who had just spotted a flight of hungry hawks, and the probability that Lien would end up married to one or another of his devoted fanclub.

Lien's response, of course, was an attempt to close Shunrei's tenketsu; but Shunrei, better-winded and highly pleased with himself, merely dodged his cousin's infuriated blows with an insulting ease topped off with a blown raspberry. This soon degenerated into an impromptu game of tag all around, on top of, and through the Hyuuga grounds.

* * *

Hanabi and Shunrei would be having dinner at the Hyuugas' that night, Naruto being away at Suna for a meeting with Gaara. Shunrei, still in high fettle from his sparring, regaled his aunt, uncle, mother and grandfather with a hilarious accounting of the day's events – much to Lien's obvious discomfort. Hanabi and Tenten were soon reduced to speechlessness via trying not to burst into hysterical laughter if they opened their mouths; Lien was bright red, which was unfortunately all-too-common among the pale-skinned Hyuugas, and even Hiashi and Neji seemed to be muffling smiles. (Although they were more sympathetic, having been subject to similar persecutions in their youth)

Shunrei, of course, with his father's instinct for mayhem, reveled in it all. He was just finishing off explaining how three of the girls had booby-trapped the bathroom and forced Lien to run outside without his shirt when Lien finally snapped.

"It's not _fair!"_ he burst out, clenching his fists. He glared at Shunrei, his eyes just on the verge of going full Byakugan. "I shouldn't have to deal with all of them; half of them, at least, should be bothering _you._ If only that stupid Nara girl…not all of us have girlfriends to scare those airheads off, you know."

Everyone else at the table was gaping at Lien, not least Shunrei. "What…what are you talking about?" he finally stammered.

"Oh, don't pretend like you're clueless," Lien sneered in a very good imitation of his father at his haughtiest - which was usually when Neji was trying to cover discomfort or anxiety. "That Nara girl staked her claim on you the first day of classes, and beat up anyone who didn't listen. And _you've_ never said anything to stop her, so _of course_ everyone thinks you're all but engaged! And left me to deal with those silly bimbos _all by myself,"_ he finished mournfully, looking very sorry for himself.

"What…what…what…" Shunrei babbled. "I…I…who…? But! But I…how…_when…_" His eyes were wide and wild, almost rolling like a frightened colt's. "She…but she…"

Their elders were of course convulsed in laughter.

A telling glance between Hanabi and Tenten, however, revealed that the two mothers would be shortly engaged in a little investigation of the females in their sons' year.

* * *

_This is what happens when you have nothing to do on a transoceanic flight than to write and ponder Nessie-chan's "Daring to Bleed". _


End file.
